If Misfits’ Guide to TOKYO #1 was about my recommendations to see buildings that are probably going to be around for a long time to come, then this post is about those that I’m not so sure about so, if you’re in Tokyo and wanting to see some buildings, you might want to take a […]
At the end of what turned out to be the first part of this three-part post, I wondered how to downsize those access/street-threshold relationships Riken Yamamoto had embedded into his Pangyo Housing project. Part two made me think of voids and how they create a seemingly desirable physical and psychological separation between the outside with […]
This is the last installment. At the end of the book was a list of all of Yamamoto’s references, including any translations. Apart from the ideas contained in this book, I’ve also learned a lot from the “working” translations. Because I translated and published it onscreen in installments, I wasn’t able to return and replace […]
I apologize for not ending the previous installment at a natural break. This installment is the second last, and picks up from here. Yamamoto returns to his theme of housing that isn’t just a place to live, but that has been designed as a place in which commercial activity can also happen. There’s much resistance […]
I expect this post will probably be the third or fourth last installment. The Pritzker jury (rightly) noted Yamamoto’s “concern for community” but, in doing so, they allow us to understand, pigeonholed and diminish him as the guy who designs group housing. Now, as we are only a few pages from the end of this […]
I expect this post will probably be the third or fourth last installment. The Pritzker jury (rightly) noted Yamamoto’s “concern for community” but, in doing so, they allow us to understand, pigeonholed and diminish him as the guy who designs group housing. Now, as we are only a few pages from the end of this […]
Big thoughts this week. We’ve come a long way from Ancient Greece, Industrial Revolution worker housing, fieldwork, threshold spaces and the bureaucracy of Tokyo municipal housing provision and seem to be heading back to Ancienty Greece via participatory decision making. Yamamoto draws heavily upon the writings of Hannah Arendt once more, this time on On […]
“Don’t Struggle!” To complete the story, the working drawings had been completed and, immediately before the construction company was to be decided, the mayor who had been enthusiastic about the competition lost the mayoral elections. The main reason for the ensuing confusion was that the opinion of the new mayor was swayed by one portion […]
In the past week and while I’ve been translating this book in order to have a better understanding of last year’s Pritzker Prize laureate, there’s been an announcement of the next one. Two successive architects who we can learn a lot from is almost too much. I struggle to keep up with this new rate […]
At the end of the first part of this two-part post, I noted that I don’t know of any other architect, housing association or housing provider who’s keen to incorporate Yamamoto’s recommendation that all dwellings have some kind of threshold space, physical or visual, connecting and at the same time separating the public realm and […]
First, I must mention one more thought that stuck in my mind from the last installment. Yamamoto mentioned how worker housing provision was (and still is) all about isolation (a.k.a. privacy) from the world and setting the conditions for procreation to replenish the labor force. I’d never thought of procreation as a form of renewable […]
From having read and translated this much, I’ve come to the conclusion that architects should read more, and not just about other architects and whatever they have to say. I can understand why this book has never been translated into any other language or is even that well known in Japan. Its thoughts are too […]
We’re up to Chapter 5 now. I don’t think the book is going to suddenly turn steamy but the first subtitle is 5.1 Housing for “Sexual Phenomena” – or at least that’s the first translation that came to mind. Looking back, we started with a review of how the houses of Ancient Greece had a public […]
This installment begins slowly and soon had a couple of sentences I couldn’t make any sense out of but it was worth persevering because, with this book, everything makes sense sooner or later. We’re now five pages short of the beginning of Chapter 5 so I’m expecting the next few pages to be the turning […]
